Suchergebnisse

How to sustain spaces of peace and non-violence is a central concern of many refugee and immigrant groups arriving in their adopted homelands. Because these groups may have fled war-torn countries; political oppression; or economic, social or cultural hardships, the sustenance of community cohesion, everyday living, and the negotiation of life itself are paramount. The role of public spaces and institutions in host societies builds on the notion of nimmathi, the Tamil term for "peace." In order to understand marginalized groups' perceptions of public spaces and institutions, and the ways in which these perceptions diverge from mainstream uses and expectations, this paper explores the everyday practices, friendships and relationships, and barriers and struggles faced by new immigrant and refugee communities. The communities we are working with are predominantly new immigrants and refugees of South Asian, African, Caribbean, and Latin American origin, and their service providers. Of particular interest are the strategies and tactics that marginalized groups resort to, to redefine the meanings and uses of various kinds of public spaces. Building on census data gathered for neighbourhoods across the city of Toronto, we present some focus group results that offer a particularly powerful and critical perspective on the way spaces are defined and imagined. Community participants' knowledge and use of the city was highly localized, with service agencies providing an essential anchor and rootedness to associational relationships and ties to the city. Access and mobility were repeatedly raised by participants as key factors influencing choices of where it was safe and comfortable to go. Community members use available resources to counter the isolation and exclusion they feel, but their access and mobility are nevertheless affected by insufficient built infrastructure (e.g., public transit, facilities) and by personal discomfort and social boundaries. The knowledge provided by participants has led us to rethink the nature ...

AbstractIn Ontario, the landscape of public education has changed quite rapidly during the past decade. Critics argue that neoliberal policies concerning privatization and marketization in the education system have produced different outcomes for different groups. One of the most sensitive issues during these years has been the closure of schools. Over three years (1999–2002) nearly 200 schools were closed in Ontario. These many changes, however, have not gone uncontested and communities have adapted to these circumstances in different ways. Acts of citizenship range from coping independently to challenging these changes collectively. This article examines the failures and successes of various acts of citizenship in challenging neoliberal governmental rationalities. More specifically, it traces the difficult process of school closure negotiations using examples from Toronto. Based primarily on participant observation carried out over a year, it examines the politics of the community consultation process among a heterogeneous 'family of schools' amid mixed incomes and varying capacities and needs. Through these case studies it explores whether these acts are inclusionary or exclusionary, homogenizing or diversifying, positive or negative. The evolution of the planning process is examined at three different periods (1998, 1999, 2000), demonstrating the slow and steady construction, advancement and legitimization of neoliberal policy, and correspondingly the spaces and citizens it makes and unmakes through this process. The article concludes with a framework of collective action highlighting relational aspects of citizenship that lead to positive or negative consequences for civil society.

The notion of social capital in contemporary societies is viewed as being necessary for the rejuvenation of civil society. However, such assumptions are based on inclusionary democratic practices; the heterogeneity of societal needs and the underlying power structures are often not taken into account. The author explores the possibility of examining neighbourhood-based social capital along the lines of 'intrinsic' (within neighbourhood) and 'extrinsic' (neighbourhood–city) relations. A spatial comparison of such preexisting, dense, dynamic networks of everyday mundane activities often leads to a better understanding of how power is created, maintained, and eventually used in times of neighbourhood crises. More specifically, by using a Flyvbjergian perspective of rationality and power, the author combines the notion of social capital as proposed by Putnam with Epstein's framework of participation within schools, to identify variations in civic activities within Public Elementary School Districts in Toronto (TDSB). Drawing from a unique descriptive dataset on parental and community participation available from the TDSB, and by combining it with enumeration-area data aggregated at the school-district level, this framework is empirically tested to gain an understanding of how such links relate to school-closure decisions. Within the context of education reform in Ontario, the results reveal the paradoxical nature of social capital in promoting and subjugating notions of democracy and civil society.

Social Infrastructure and Vulnerability in the Suburbs examines how the combination of the low-density, car-centric geography of outer suburbs and neoliberal governance in the past several decades has affected disadvantaged populations in North American metro areas.

The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in Canada. It draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and critiques of methodological nationalism to do so. The concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to understand the relationship between Indigeneity and migration in a settler colonial context. The paper develops this conceptual proposal through an analysis of a single place over time: Scarborough, Ontario. Authors present portraits of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada to understand how migration and Indigenous sovereignty are narrated and regulated in convergent and divergent ways. Together, the portraits examine historical stories, media discourses, photography and map archives, fieldwork and interviews connected to Scarborough. They reveal how the differential inclusion of migrant, racialized and Indigenous peoples operates through processes of invisibilization and hypervisibilization, fixity and erasure, and memorialization. They also illustrate moments of disruption that work to unsettle settler colonial dispossession.